Your co-workers are less ambitious; Boss adjusts to new order

 

• For a growing number of professionals, the days of unpaid overtime and working through weekends are a thing of the past. Firms add people to complete projects, close for holidays and take other steps

Where have all the go-getters gone?

At law firm Nixon Peabody LLP, associates are starting to say no to working weekends, prompting partners to ask more people to help them complete time-sensitive assignments. TGS Insurance in Texas has struggled to fill promotions, and owners often have to persuade employees to apply. And Maine-based marketing company Pulp + Wire plans to close for two weeks next year, as employees are taking more leave than ever before.

"The passion we used to see in work is less now, and you find it in fewer people—at least in the last two years," says Sumitra Jagannath, president of ZED Digital, a maker of digital ticket scanners. The Columbus, Ohio, company recently moved about 20 remote engineering and marketing roles to Canada and India, where it says it's easier to find talent that will go above and beyond.

She says that since the start of the pandemic, many employees have asked for higher pay when managers said they were overworked. “It was not like this before Covid at all,” she adds.

Many white-collar workers say the events of the last three years have rearranged their priorities and shown them what they were missing when they were spending so much time in the office. Now that normalcy is returning, even some workers who used to stay on and always put in the effort say they find themselves eyeing the clock as the day winds down, overtime Talking about not working or taking a pay cut for better work-life balance.

Reduced ambition could leave companies needing more people to do the same amount of work, something that could eventually put pressure on US economic productivity. And bosses are openly considering the implications. Comments by Home Depot Inc co-founder Bernie Marcus that "no one works, no one cares," with possible implications for the future of capitalism, spread quickly this week in the Financial Times. A spokesperson for the retailer said: "Bernie Marcus retired from Home Depot more than 20 years ago and does not speak on behalf of the company."

In a November survey of more than 3,000 workers and managers by software firm Qualtrics, 36% said their overall career ambitions had decreased over the past three years, while 22% said their ambition had increased. Nearly 40% said work has become less important to them in the past three years, while 25% said it has become more important, according to researchers from Qualtrics, which surveys businesses to evaluate customer and employee experiences. Provides software.

Even in tough fields like law and finance, where sleeping through the night is not uncommon, some professionals object to the drudgery. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. A group of first-year analysts in the U.S. complained to bank leaders last year that they are working an average of 95 hours a week and that the stress of the job has damaged their physical and mental health. Goldman responded by saying it would hire additional bankers and more strictly enforce limits around working hours. In an American Bar Association survey of nearly 2,000 members this year, 44% of young attorneys said they would leave their jobs for greater ability to work elsewhere.